Trending News: Got a Drinking Problem? Simply Cutting Back Won't Help

Why Is This Important?

Long Story Short

If you have an alcohol dependency problem, trying to learn moderation likely won’t work, new research says. It seems to be cold turkey or bust.

Long Story

More and more research is emerging that finds drinking too much is a genetic disposition rather than an acquired illness, but regardless it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long, slow descent from boozing on in your teens, to hitting it hard in the clubs in your early 20s, to suddenly not knowing when to stop when you hit your 30s. It’s tempting then to wonder if that descent can be reversed — to see if we can learn to moderate our drinking.

Apparently not. That’s the finding of new research from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Basically, alcohol dependent people who are seeking to quit drinking entirely will have more success than those who try to wind it back to moderation — even when they’re supported by a care provider.

It’s a topic that’s relevant to Sweden, where a debate has been taking place between different care providers, some of whom believe alcoholics can learn to control their drinking while others insist that total abstinence is the only way forward.

The Gothenburg study looked at the success of 201 adult patients two and a half years after beginning treatment. “Patients whose goal was total abstinence were more successful than those who had chosen to control their drinking,” Associate Professor Kristina Berglund said in a news release from the university. Berglund studies dependence at the university’s Department of Psychology.

Around 90 percent of patients who were supported by a care provider to achieve total abstinence had been successful, while only 50 percent who were in agreement with their care provider on controlled consumption treatment had succeeded in controlling their drinking at follow-up. The results illustrated that agreement on treatment between patient and provider — often touted as a decisive factor in kicking the booze — didn’t really make any difference.

“Our study shows that, regardless of agreement on goals and methods, in the end it is more difficult to stick to controlled drinking than to give it up entirely,” Berglund added.

The news comes on the heels of a recent report that Americans are spending more than ever on alcohol, jumping 3.8 percent these past 12 months. Which might sound bad but is actually good, because while the spend is up, consumption is flat — it’s just that we’re drinking fancier stuff. Which, if nothing else, is probably another sign that the economy is coming back.

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Alcoholism is an addiction like any other. You can’t wind back your addiction, can you?

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How does this compare to beating other forms of addiction?

Drop This Fact

Remember when cider was all the rage? Not anymore: cider volume is down 5.3 percent over the last 12 months, a huge change for a beverage that had annual sales increases of up to 75 percent just a few years ago.